A French Rafale fighter plane is seen on a runway past spectators, during a Seoul Airshow on Oct. 16, 2001.

Does granting foreign aid for development give a country the right to expect business favors in return?

Well, that’s what the British media appears to be suggesting after India last week chose France’s Dassault Aviation SA as a favorite to win a $10 billion contract to supply 126 fighter jets to India’s air force.

The other shortlisted bidder was a European consortium including the U.K.’s BAE Systems, and its failure to secure the deal was an embarrassment for British Prime Minister David Cameron’s coalition government.

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British papers have pointed out the U.K. is one of India’s largest aid donors, as if this fact should have influenced India’s decision on the fighters. (New Delhi says Dassault’s bid to supply the planes was cheaper.)

In December, Britain’s International Development Secretary, Andrew Mitchell, told reporters during a trip to New Delhi that Britain’s aid should be seen in the context of improving economic ties with India.

The Obama administration, too, has pushed aid as a way of exercising soft power around the world. Aid, especially during the Cold War, has always been politicized.

But to expect a specific outcome over a fighter jet deal because of aid is likely to diminish – rather than enhance – Britain’s soft power in India, says Jayati Ghosh, an economics professor at New Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University. “It’s certainly not a quid pro quo,” she says.

The British media reaction to the lost deal took a new turn this weekend, when The Sunday Telegraph, a British newspaper, reported that Indian Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee had in 2010 attempted to stop Britain’s aid, calling it a “peanut in our total development exercises.”

The report said how Britain’s government then fought to keep its aid program going to avoid political embarrassment.

A narrative has grown up in Britain that India’s economy is growing fast, while the U.K. is facing economic headwinds, making a foreign aid program to India unfeasible. Britain’s failure to win the fighter jet deal has given impetus to this view.

The Cameron government has stuck by commitments to raise Britain’s aid spending by 2013 to 0.7% of its national product, in line with international commitments, and up from 0.56% now.

Yet by any measure, the U.K.’s spending on Indian development is small and unlikely to change the overall economic picture in Britain or India.

The U.K. has committed to spend 280 million British pounds ($440 million) per year in India through 2015, a smidgen compared to Britain’s overall budget spending. It’s also a tiny amount compared to the billions of dollars India itself has earmarked for new poverty-eradication programs. “It’s a drop in the ocean,” says Ms. Ghosh.

But does this mean India doesn’t need the U.K. program? Possibly not.

India’s latest poverty eradication efforts, including a multi-billion-dollar employment guarantee program, have come under criticism for graft and failing to raise people’s living standards.

Despite recent poverty reduction, India remains home to a third of the world’s people living on less than $1.25 per day.

Britain’s projects, run by the Department of International Development, focuses on the country’s poorest states – Madhya Pradesh, Bihar and Orissa. The U.K.’s strategy also aims to encourage private investment in projects – a different approach to India’s state-led solutions.

Whether the U.K. can have an impact on India through this tack is as yet unclear. But it’s certainly nothing to do with fighter jets.

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India Real Time offers analysis and insights into the broad range of developments in business, markets, the economy, politics, culture, sports, and entertainment that take place every single day in the world’s largest democracy. Regular posts from Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones Newswires reporters around the country provide a unique take on the main stories in the news, shed light on what else mattered and why, and give global readers a snapshot of what Indians have been talking about all week. You can contact the editors at indiarealtime(at)wsj(dot)com.